About two months ago the Center for TOD released a report called Rails to Real Estate. The basic gist of the report was that development along three new light rail lines was influenced by a number of different factors, some of which include income, employment proximity and walkability. But to me one factor stood out specifically. No matter where the vacant land was available, development was happening proximate to employment destinations along the corridor. As you can see below, along each of the lines that were studied, development followed employment.

We've been talking a lot about the website lately and highlighting special pages, but I wanted to focus on one in particular today. Value Capture. Our colleague at Strategic Economics, Nadine Fogarty, has written extensively on the subject including a paper called "Capturing the Value of Transit". There has been a lot of research on this subject recently and lots of attention has been paid to it as a way to plug the funding gap. But if you want to know where to find more papers and resources on the subject, look no further than our Value Capture featured topic page. There you'll find over 30 papers that focus on the subject. But don't take our word for it, Elmo loves it too.

The US Government has historically facilitated public infrastructure development overseas by providing low-interest loans, loan guarantees, and favorable tax treatment for companies. Through our participation in multilateral banks, such as the World Bank, and helping to found and capitalize regional development banks in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, we have increased private sector investment in infrastructure in developing economies. These projects have a mixed history, and in some cases have had environmental and human rights impacts. Innovative Transportation Finance seeks to bring these tools home to the United States.

New research by David M. Levinson and Emilia Istrate from the Brookings Institute looks at capturing the value generated by improved transportation access in order to pay for more improvements. Key to this concept is the "virtuous circle."

A trio of reports from the past five years detailing various transit financing methods have been added to the Best Practices section.
Value Capture for Transportation FinanceThis 2009 report to the Minnesota Legislature was written by the University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies.
"As vehicles become more fuel-efficient and overall levels of travel stagnate in response to increases in fuel prices, conventional sources of revenue for transportation finance such as taxes on motor fuels have been put under increasing pressure. One potential alternative as a source of revenue is a set of policies collectively referred to as value capture policies. In contrast to fuel taxes and other instruments that impose charges on users of transportation networks,…

The Government Accountability Office has sent a report to congressional committees exploring what the federal government might do to facilitate the efforts of state and local agencies to fund transit systems by capturing the value generated by the transit-oriented improvements.

The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD), Transportation for America (T4America), the National Housing Conference (NHC), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and LOCUS: Responsible Real Estate Developers and Investors hosted a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Financing Forum on May 17, 2010 in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The event brought together more than70 participants from the housing, development, public and private finance, transportation and policy sectors to discuss the complexities of financing TOD. The Forum was designed as an opportunity to exchange policy ideas between TOD practitioners, advocates and federal policy makers. CTOD released a set of 10 federal policy recommendations to accelerate equitable TOD through upcoming transportation, tax, and livable community legislation. AIA also released its…

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The Half-Mile Circles blog is a place to share information about recent research, innovations and other issues related to TOD and livable communities. We also invite experts to talk about their work. Combined with Jeff Wood's The Other Side of the Tracks, the Half-Mile Circles blog is an opportunity for a daily dose of TOD, and allows you to weigh in with your own opinions. Usual blog rules apply; please keep the comment threads civil. To submit an expert article, contact Jeff Wood